Challenger Quality and the Incumbency Advantage

Most estimates of the incumbency advantage and the electoral benefits of previous officeholding experience do not account for strategic entry by high‐quality challengers. We address this issue by using term limits as an instrument for challenger quality. Studying US state legislatures, we find strong evidence of strategic behavior by experienced challengers. However, we also find that such behavior does not appear to significantly bias the estimated effect of challenger experience or the estimated incumbency advantage. More tentatively, using our estimates, we find that 30–40% of the incumbency advantage in state legislative races is the result of “scaring off” experienced challengers.     

Is Incumbency Advantage Gendered?

Do incumbents have an electoral advantage and if so, do these advantages differ across gender? In this study, I estimate the electoral advantages enjoyed by incumbents in 10 Canadian federal elections, across 3059 ridings, from 1990 to 2021. Using a regression discontinuity design, I compare men and women who have very narrowly won or lost elections on three different indicators: propensity to run again, probability of winning the next election, and vote share. I find that women incumbents are just as likely to run again in subsequent elections as men incumbents. However, women who lose an election appear to be more likely to quit politics compared to men who lose an election. I do not find clear incumbency effects for probability of winning at the next election and vote share.     

Cohort Effects and the Incumbency Advantage

The literature on the incumbency advantage in U.S. House elections has focused mostly on political variables, such as competition and incumbent resources. For this article, I identify an important sociological variable: a cohort effect that separates older generations from younger ones. Younger generations have been more likely to vote for incumbents, and the difference has endured over time, even as the political environment itself has changed and become more partisan. Moreover, the results hold even when one controls for partisan identification and general time‐period effects. The incumbency advantage may be a broader and more‐enduring part of American politics than has previously been recognized.     

Evidence of a Local Incumbency Advantage

Incumbents are highly likely to win reelection at all levels of government, but scholars continue to debate the extent to which serving in office has a causal effect on winning. For city council elections it is unclear whether or not we should predict a causal effect at all. City councilors may not regularly seek reelection, and any apparent advantage could be entirely attributable to preexisting qualities rather than incumbency. This article uses a regression discontinuity design to provide evidence that city council incumbents are more likely to run and win their next elections because they served a term in office.     

Television and the Incumbency Advantage in U.S. Elections

We use the structure of media markets within states and across state boundaries to study the relationship between television and electoral competition. In particular, we compare incumbent vote margins in media markets where content originates in the same state as media consumers versus vote margins where content originates out of state. This contrast provides a clear test of whether or not television coverage correlates with the incumbency advantage. We study U.S. Senate and state gubernatorial races from the 1950s through the 1990s and find that the effect of TV is small, directionally indeterminate, and statistically insignificant.     

Electoral Security of Members of the U.S. House, 1900–2006

Previous studies have documented that the increase in the incumbency advantage in the 1960s did not decrease the probability of defeat of incumbents in the U.S. House. I define a method for establishing bounds on the probability of incumbent defeat and find that it decreases significantly in the 1950s, before the rise of the incumbency advantage. Incumbency advantage does not have a direct relationship with incumbent defeat rates, raising questions about the use of the incumbency advantage as a means for making inferences about the electoral security of incumbents.     

Strategic Retirements: The Influence of Public Preferences On Voluntary Departures from Congress

Are members of Congress responsive to public preferences in their decisions to seek reelection or retire, or do members simply rely on the advantages of incumbency to secure reelection? I argue that members of Congress consider their electoral vulnerability when deciding whether or not to seek reelection, informing their reelection odds with the same short‐term electoral forces that influence election outcomes: partisan preferences, economic evaluations, and congressional approval. Considering aggregate rates of voluntary departures from the House and Senate from 1954 to 2004, I show that rates of retirement reflect, not only institutional environments within Congress, but also the mood of the electorate.     

Legislative Effectiveness and Legislative Careers

We studied an underutilized source of data on legislative effectiveness and exploited its panel structure to uncover several interesting patterns. We found that effectiveness rises sharply with tenure, at least for the first few terms, even when we control for legislators' institutional positions, party affiliation, and other factors. Effectiveness never declines with tenure, even out to nine terms. The increase in effectiveness is not simply due to electoral attrition and selective retirement, but to learning‐by‐doing. We also found evidence that a significant amount of “positive sorting” occurs in the legislature, with highly talented legislators moving more quickly into positions of responsibility and power. Finally, effectiveness has a positive impact on incumbents' electoral success and on the probability of legislators moving to higher office. These findings have important implications for arguments about term limits, the incumbency advantage, and seniority rule.     

Incumbency Effects under Proportional Representation: Leaders and Backbenchers in the Postwar Italian Chamber of Deputies

We study incumbency effects for individual legislators from two political parties (Christian Democracy and the Italian Socialist Party) in Italy's lower house of representatives over 10 legislatures (1948–92) elected using open‐list proportional representation. Our analysis finds no reelection advantage for the average incumbent legislator. Only a tiny elite in each party successfully creates an incumbency advantage. We find incumbents advantaged for reselection by their political party. We interpret reselection advantage as a party loyalty premium. Our study depicts a political environment monopolized by party leaders who reward party loyalty but hamper legislators in appealing directly to voters.     

Job Approval and Senate Election Outcomes In the United States

A growing body of congressional scholarship investigates variation in the incumbent electoral advantage that depends on factors such as competence, political skill, and ideological extremity. This article contributes to this line of work by providing analysis of the relationship between senators' home‐state approval ratings and their electoral fortunes using newly available data from the Job Approval Ratings (JAR) collection. The findings show that senatorial job approval affects retirement, quality‐candidate emergence, campaign spending, and outcomes. The myriad indirect effects suggest that strategic political actors are central to the process by which incumbents are held accountable for the reputations they develop in their constituencies.     

Electronic Grassroots: Does Online Campaigning Work?

This research explores the implications of the growing use of the Internet to campaign and win elections in the United States. After exploring the historic assumptions and motivations behind the use of the Internet to campaign, the authors use election data from the 2006 midterm congressional elections and webpage ranking data from the leading web-based ranking service to assess the impact of Internet campaigning. The findings indicate that web presence is a significant predictor of the total votes candidates garnered in the 2006 congressional elections, even when controlling for variables such as funding, incumbency and experience. Further, the findings also suggest that, generally, Democrats had a stronger web presence than Republicans and this increased presence contributed to their success in the election. This research suggests that potential candidates need to be particularly concerned about the success of their websites and their popularity within the Internet community when running for office.     

Political Dynasties and the Selection of Cabinet Ministers

We investigate whether politicians whose family relatives previously served in parliament and cabinet enjoy a competitive “legacy advantage” in progressing from the backbenches to cabinet. This advantage may stem from two potential mechanisms: a direct effect attributable to the informational advantages of legacies or an indirect effect that operates through greater electoral strength. We evaluate the relative contribution of each mechanism using candidate‐level data from Irish parliamentary elections and cabinets from 1944 to 2016. Our results reveal that politicians with a family history in cabinet do enjoy an advantage in cabinet selection, and that this advantage cannot be attributed simply to greater electoral popularity. 1     

Presidential influence on parliamentary election timing and the electoral fate of prime ministers

Most presidential heads of state in parliamentary and semi-presidential democracies have constitutional powers to influence early election calling, which enable them to influence the conditions under which prime ministers are held accountable by the electorate. We examine whether presidents use theses powers to shape the timing of early elections for partisan advantage and to influence the electoral performance of prime ministers. Drawing on data from 193 elections in 18 European democracies (1945–2013), we find that presidents with significant dissolution powers enable incumbents in governments that include the president’s party to realise a significant electoral bonus compared with governments that exclude the party of the president.     

The Iraq War,Partisanship, and Candidate Attributes: Variation in Partisan Swing in the 2006 U.S. House Elections

Although partisan swing is often assumed to be uniform across congressional districts, our analysis of the 2006 House elections demonstrates that systematic variation exists. In addition to incumbency status, partisanship, spending, and scandal, variation in the local salience of national issues across districts affects vote shifts in these districts. Notably, partisan swing in Republican districts proved highly sensitive to the number of Iraq war deaths from that district and, to a lesser degree, to the roll‐call vote of Republican House members on the war resolution. These findings have implications for theories of anticipatory representation, retrospective voting, and electoral accountability.     

Issue Voting and Partisan Defections in Congressional Elections

In every election cycle the fate of some candidates is determined by partisans who defect from their usual voting habits to cast a ballot for the candidate of the opposing party. Defections in congressional elections have been attributed to incumbency, presidential approval, partisan strength, and factors related to individual voters. Our systematic assessment of the impact of issues on voter defections shows that party‐owned issues and performance issues associated favorably with one party affect the likelihood of partisan defections. The results suggest that congressional candidates can use issues to draw supporters away from the opposing party and to keep partisan voters loyal.     

Is Timing Everything? Retirement and Seat Maintenance in the U.S. House of Representatives

Literature on open‐seat elections has focused on the individual attributes of a candidate and/or institutional arrangements. When a seat becomes an open contest could be a significant indicator as to how likely the incumbent party is able to maintain the seat. Examining data on open U.S. House seats from 1996 to 2008, we use OLS regression and logistic regression analysis, finding that time is a significant predictor for incumbent party fund‐raising and seat maintenance. We conclude that political parties have an interest in encouraging members of Congress to announce their retirement early in the election cycle.     

Minority Voting Equality: The 65 Percent Rule in Theory and Practice

In order to provide minorities with a realistic opportunity to elect candidates of their choice, an apparently obvious step is to create districts in which the minority equals half the population. A number of factors, however, make this a false equality. As a consequence, courts have used a "65 percent" rule, suggesting that equality of the voting population is achieved only when the overall population of a district is nearly two-thirds minority. We distinguish between this "equalization percentage" and the percentage needed to create a "safe" seat. We show that for blacks "equalization percentages": 1) are almost never as high as 65 percent; 2) vary widely across time and space; 3) have declined somewhat in the 1980s; 4) vary sharply between primaries and general elections; 5) are affected most heavily by the proportion of minority populations that is of voting age (or noncitizen) rather than by differences in registration and turnout. Election results further caution us that even when numerical equality in the voting population is appropriately calculated, such a population proportion is not always sufficient to elect minority candidates because of incumbency effects and differentially polarized voting. We argue that both packing blacks into overwhelmingly black districts and ignoring less tangible factors that hinder black electoral success are extremes to be avoided.     

Subnational Determinants of National Multipartism in Latin America

Recent research points to the importance of subnational elections as variables shaping the national party system in federal states (Jones 1997b; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Samuels 2000). I propose that the effects of subnational elections are not limited to federal states but instead can be seen throughout the region. This paper examines the impacts of gubernatorial elections across eighteen Latin American countries during the most recent democratic period. The analysis suggests that intermediate subnational elections do exert an influence on national party systems, whether the state is federal or not, and particularly influence how many parties are elected to a legislature's lower house.     

Local News Coverage and the Incumbency Advantage in the U.S. House

Much of the incumbency advantage in the U.S. House of Representatives is attributed to incumbents' efforts to address constituents' needs. Yet House members do not win reelection simply by performing well in office, but also by informing constituents of how well they are doing their jobs. I examined the value of local news coverage for legislators seeking to publicize their legislative work on behalf of constituents. I found that incumbents who win more newspaper coverage are viewed as being more in touch with the district and are more likely to win support from constituents during bids for reelection.     

The behavioural consequences of institutional rules: republicans in the US house

The Republicans gained a majority in the US House from the 1994 elections, and upon taking office they rewrote the rules that determine legislative power relations. This paper combines a 1996 attitudinal survey of US Representatives with demographic information, status within the House, and party position to examine the impact of the 1995 rule changes on satisfaction, ambition, and retirement. This paper demonstrates that member reactions to reform are explained jointly by their partisanship and their relative position within their party. Senior members of any party dislike rules making power more exclusive, and dissatisfaction increases the likelihood of retirement.